Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

September 16, 2020

No, Israel Doesn’t Prefer Undemocratic Regimes in the Middle East

Switzerland can embrace Iran, but Jerusalem can’t embrace Abu Dhabi?

Last month, with the announcement of the peace agreement—signed yesterday—between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, one respected expert on the Arab world averred that “it’s hard to imagine an Arab country, if it were democratic, striking a peace deal with Israel” and that, moreover, “Israel, one of the region's few democracies, prefers that its Arab neighbors not be democratic.” Some have taken this line of reasoning one step further, to suggest that Jerusalem is in some sense propping up Arab dictatorships. Nonsense, writes Seth Frantzman:

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